


Alone

by stateofintegrity



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Klinger gets another cat, M/M, Radar raises therapy animals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:48:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26302198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: When Charles returns home from Korea alone, Honoria calls him out on the horrible mistake he's made.
Relationships: Maxwell Klinger/Charles Emerson Winchester III
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	Alone

The airport seemed impossible after Korea, after Tokyo. Everything was too bright and too loud and wavering: distant. His mouth was terror dry.  _ This was all you wanted _ , he tried to remind himself.  _ You would have  _ **_killed_ ** _ for it _ .

Another part of him piped up then, using a voice borrowed from another man.  _ You  _ **_did_ ** _ kill for it, Major. You killed the very best part of you. _

He shut the voice down before it could say the terrible rest. He’d heard it before. Once he’d heard the real thing - a live and aching performance - and now he had to endure the echoes. They lived, lost, in the chambers of his heart, unable to find the way out.  _ You’re breaking my heart, you know,  _ he silently told the beautiful man he’d never see again. 

He surfaced to find his sister looking into his eyes. “Why are y-you alone?” she demanded in place of the welcome he had been expecting. 

“I left alone,” he reminded her unnecessarily. “Who did you imagine would be accompanying me?”

Her stutter vanished. “Your Sergeant.”

“ _ My _ !?”

“Oh, G-god, C-charles!  _ Did y-you hurt him _ ?” She sounded perfectly horrified and fear flooded him; her voice was the voice of a battalion aid medic calling down with news of continued shelling, it was that hated cry of “Choppers!” that he  _ prayed _ never to hear again even in his dreams. 

Back on American soil, Charles felt very much under attack. Disgusted, his darling sister who had come to retrieve him turned from him and gave him no choice but to follow her angry form to the car, where she slammed the driver’s side door but did not start the engine. 

“Do you eve-even know where he is?” she asked quietly. 

“My dear, I have missed you for two years with almost every breath I have drawn. However, I do not understand  _ this _ . What is it that you are so ferociously irate with me about, Honoria?” 

She turned swimming eyes on him. “ _ I _ loved him, too.” She dashed the tears away, a gesture he remembered from childhood but hadn’t seen for years. He had never  _ caused _ it before, and he wondered if any of this was real at all. Maybe he had died and this was his hell. “I wrote to him almost as often as I w-wrote to y-you.”

He chose to believe that her words were stutter-fractured rather than sob-fractured; he could not have borne the latter. 

“He never told me,” he whispered. 

“He c-could be as m-much an id-idiot as you are. It’s h-how I knew you w-were p-perfect for each other.” 

_ Oh God. What  _ **_have_ ** _ I done?  _

“Honoria…”

“You  _ do  _ know that he c-couldn’t r-return to Toledo, don’t you?”

“I know nothing of the sort.”

She looked like she very much wanted to scream. “C-Charles, you must b-be the worst b-boyfriend who has ever lived! His fam-family w-went out West. There’s l-literally _no_ _one_ for h-him to go home to!” She smacked her hand off of the expensive steering wheel. “You did-didn’t make a s-single b-bloody arrangement for him!?” 

“He is not a funeral! I wasn’t aware I had to!” 

Her eyes changed. She was still exasperated and disgusted, but she looked terribly sad -  _ for him. _ “W-welcome home, brother d-dear. Mother and f-father will celebrate their s-soldier son for a m-month at least. And for lifted champ-champagne glasses and their very t-temporary a-approval, you left behind the best friend you’ll ever have. I hope it was w-worth it.”

She said nothing else on the drive home. 

***

Maxwell Q. Klinger, former Sergeant and clerk of MASH 4077, was having a hell of a time. His family had relocated. His GI benefits had been sent to Korea while he was shipped Stateside, so he was broke, and now he was in some sort of market (more exotic than some of the stuff he’d seen overseas) and two men - one with animal control - were arguing about putting a bullet (Max had bloody well had enough of  _ those _ ) in the head of a tiny creature in a cage, since it was illegal to sell it for food and the parks service wouldn’t take it. Without saying a word, Max walked between them, sat down twenty dollars, and lifted up the little cage. He might be unwanted in Toledo, where his ex-wife had married his best friend, and in Boston, where he wasn’t good enough to set food in the Major’s world, but wherever he was going, he wasn’t going alone! 

“Don’t worry,” he told the tiny thing when he’d left the market and found a park. “I might not know how to take care of you just right, but I know someone who does.” 

***

Five days later, Maxwell Q. Klinger arrived in Ottumwa, Iowa with an army russack full of dresses, a fawn, a pot-bellied piglet, three kittens, a ferret, and what some might have seen as a questionable grip on reality. Ma O’Reilley, when she opened the door, thought the man might be straight out of one of those old timey European fairytales where pixies and such walked out of the sides of hills. 

He sure was a polite pixie though, apologizing for the dust on his shoes and pants and for the animals. “I didn’t mean to bring them all,” he said, looking lost, “but I couldn’t let em go hungry.”

These were magical words in the O’Reilley house. Deciding this odd, tanned man that called her son Radar and traveled with a tiny zoo was mostly just hungry himself, Edna O’Reilley brought him inside, hollered for Walter, and began to fry the best pork chops Klinger would ever eat. 

After dinner, Radar happily made the acquaintance of Klinger’s rescued creatures and listened to how he’d come to care for them. “I was just gonna bring you the fawn,” he began, “But once people saw I had it, they kept pointing me to other things that needed help.”

Radar nodded his complete understanding. The ferret had taken a page from Kipling’s “Rikki-tikki-tavi” and was curled around Radar’s neck like a collar. The piglet and fawn were in his lap. “You did good, Klinger.”

They were on the front porch in the evening light. Edna O’Reilley was inside with the radio on. 

“What happened with your Major?” the younger man asked. 

“Nothing surprising.” 

Radar frowned. He’d had less call to use his gift, Stateside, falling into the pleasing rhythms of seasonal work on the farm, but his time at the 4077th had overlapped with that of the proud Major. He closed his eyes. He made mistakes sometimes. No. The “reading” - his inner sense of Major Winchester - was still there, silver-white as surf on the ocean and full of the terrible pain Radar had known the man contained. And balancing that pain - starting to beat it back, in fact, - was something else. 

“Klinger, you’ve gotta call him.”

Klinger looked at him like he was quite mad. “For what? You said I can stay here a minute ‘til I get the money stuff sorted out. One of the Captains will wire me if I ask - they owe me enough from poker.”

“You can stay as long as you want to,” Radar agreed. “I always have more work than I can do and ma likes you plenty well. But where are you gonna go when that money comes?”

Klinger didn’t know. Toledo, he’d learned in the waning days of the war, had changed dramatically in his absence. He loved his family and was eager to visit them, but felt reluctant to try for a new home. He’d had to give up so much in Korea; it felt really unfair that he was still expected to sacrifice. 

“Colonel Potter’s looking into working for the VA. He said he might have a spot for me.”

“You wanna look at more pain?” Radar challenged. “You can look in a mirror for that! Klinger, you couldn’t let these animals get hurt. You don’t need to go back around hurt people. Not yet anyway.” 

Klinger lifted one of the kittens to nuzzle its softness. “You’re sure you’re okay with all these guys? It’s a lotta mouths. We can try to come up with a different plan.”

“ ‘course I’m okay. I think they’ll be perfect for something I’m working on. Dr. Freedman’s helping me with it. C’mon, I’ll show you.” 

The O’Reilley farm was modest, but full of outbuildings - the purposes of which Klinger could not guess. Radar led the way to a small barn and Klinger quickly realized why his mini menagerie raised no eyebrows. The barn housed an owl, some bats, two sheep, three young pigs, and more dogs and cats than Klinger could keep track of. 

“You’re a regular Noah, kid!” he told Radar, clapping him on one shoulder. “What is all this? The Ottumwa petting zoo?” 

“No, silly. They’re gonna be therapy critters. They can help kids who can’t walk good or people who are scared all the time. Some of them, anyway. Dr. Freedman’s doing the research. He tells me how to train them. Sends his students up sometimes.”

Klinger saw something in his eyes. “Any pretty ones?”

“Maybe one,” Radar mumbled, looking down. 

Klinger looked around at the many animals destined to improve lives. “Colonel Blake would be proud of you,” he told his friend. 

Radar gave an aww shucks smile at that, then poked him. “He wouldn’t be proud of  _ you  _ for giving up this easy. He was real proud of your sewing. Bet he’d say you could turn the Major’s head if you tried.” 

“Still on that, huh?” 

Radar’s stubborn answering smile didn’t bode well for the Corporal. By the time this was over, he might need a therapy critter himself. 

***

Life in Iowa suited Klinger. The work was hard but performed mostly under sunshine and Mrs. O might never have had baklava, but she set a great table. And if he got sad, he went to the barn and visited the creatures there. 

One afternoon, a kitten waddled out to him. “Hey, I don’t remember seeing you before,” he said, scooping it up. The kitten was plump as a brooding chicken with black blotches on its white fur. “Woo,” it said in place of “meow.” 

After that, Klinger and Hibiki (Japanese for “echo”) were inseparable, despite Radar’s objections that the little exotic would be a pain to care for. 

“He’s not real bright,” he told his friend. “And his eyes water all the time - that happens with that breed.”

What Klinger heard was, “Nobody wants him.” Knowing just what  _ that  _ felt like, he just held on tighter. 

***

When the fancy car chugged down the road to the O’Reilly place, folks up and down it got nervous. Fancy cars meant men with money… which usually meant somebody’s farm was about to be snapped up. They’d hoped Edna might be able to make a go of it, even after her brother had passed, but it looked like those hopes were at an end. 

What emerged from the car, however, was not a lawyer with his fast talk and leather briefcase, but a Bostonian with flowers for Mrs. O’Reilly, a case of grape Nehi for Radar and a very evident weakness for the O’Reilly’s hired hand. Greeting him before Klinger knew he had arrived, Radar cautioned him in his own singular fashion. “You ever seen a skittish horse, Major?” 

“Yes.”

“That’s Klinger right now. You can’t just walk up and put your hand on his nose.”

Charles hid a smile; Max’s nose was only a little smaller than the long, soft muzzle of a horse. Radar wasn’t typically someone Winchester would have asked for advice. That he did told Walter just how smitten the man was - and it gave him hope. “What do you suggest, Farmer O’Reilly?” 

Radar told him his plan. 

***

The Iowa moon, Klinger swore, was bigger and brighter somehow than its Ohio counterpart, like it had dipped down too near the high-climbing sunflowers and picked up some of their glow, like it had rolled over in the laughing faces of dandelions and surfaced all pollen-dazzled. Unable to sleep with that light bathing the covers of his borrowed bed, Klinger quietly climbed down the steps (he’d memorized which ones creaked just a little less well than Walter) and went to walk the fence line to the barn. Listening to the draft horses breathe out their soft clover breaths helped him… and sometimes he talked to them, entranced by the way they swiveled their ears for him, like he was something worth listening to. 

He hadn’t had straw underfoot for more than five minutes when he heard Hibiki calling for him. He was a sucker for that baby-soft mew and he turned, prepared to find the treats he kept in his purse, when he saw that Hibiki wasn’t alone. 

“You are beautiful even against fence posts and weathered wood. How is it that you do that?”

Klinger addressed the cat. “I thought we had a talk about bringing things home. The half-dead moles were the limit, I thought, but this is worse.”

“Woo.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

The kitten just rolled across Charles’ expensive shoes. 

“Traitor.” 

“I take it you would rather not see me?”

Klinger hopped up on the edge of a stall. “I was seeing you, I thought. Then the closer we got to peace, the more you realized it was a mistake, I guess. Wish you’d dropped me at the beginning, to be honest. You had me going with all that stuff you said.” 

“I believed you would be better off without me, Max.” 

Hibiki batted at him and to Klinger’s surprise the tall man knelt in barn straw to pet the small creature. Radar had told Winchester that Hibiki was his best bet at an olive branch.

“And what? You changed your mind?” 

“I still think you would. There are so many things at which I have little skill. I scarcely know how to be affectionate at all. But you were teaching me back in Korea.”

“I thought I taught you not to be so mean to yourself too. Guess it didn’t take.”

“Old habits. I am spectacularly good at self destruction.”

“Take up something else.” 

“I could help raise a cat? Perhaps? If you would permit me?”

“For how long, Major? ‘Til it gets hard? Or scary? Inconvenient? Embarrassing? I took that cat in for keeps, but I don’t think you can offer either of us anything like that. I guess you never really did. I shoulda listened and figured it out before it got as far as it did.” 

“Honoria barely speaks to me, now, you know. Though she sent things for you.” 

_ Oh.  _ “That’s what this is then, huh?”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“Nori’s the only person you really care about. You’d fix things with me to fix things with her, but that’d be a mistake, Major.”

Charles’ jaw was slack. “I, ah, I had no idea you called her that. It’s quite sweet.”

Klinger shrugged. “Doesn’t much matter now, does it?” 

“Max, please. I made a mistake.” 

“You knew how scared I was and you left me there anyway. Why’d you have to bother with me at all? Wasn’t there somebody halfway on your level whose heart you coulda broken?” 

“For whatever it might be worth, I destroyed mine, too. And all of my degrees and hours of surgery have been no use at all in mending it.”

“You’ll be fine. Find yourself a society gal and settle down, have some kids you treat better than your parents treated you.”

“What about you?”

“I’m not your problem. Turns out I never was.” 

Charles tried to draw nearer but Klinger slipped down, moved away. “Don’t you dare. Just cause you know what would wreck me, you don’t get to fight dirty, sir.”

“If you still feel all that I see in your eyes, how can you possibly turn me away?”

“I have to!” This came out as a  _ cry _ and it surprised them both. “There are two things, Major, that I can’t ever live through again. War and you. And I’d sign reenlistment papers  _ in a heartbeat  _ if it would get you outta my head.”

Winchester matched him ache for ache. “I thought I was coming home, Maxwell. But I cannot remain in Boston if you refuse me. There is no home without you at my side. Would you exile me from everything I have ever loved?” 

Max joined him then in the straw, two battered figures clinging to one another, tears mingling, a black and white cat face-bumping their heels. 

“I don’t want to feel sorry for you,” Klinger admitted. “You did this!” But Charles wouldn’t let him go. When the other man had quieted, he dared to ask, “How do we fix this?” 

“Marry me.”

“What!?”

“Maxwell, I find Walter O’Reilly’s strange gift downright  _ spooky _ , but he assures me that you and I are meant to be. So, marry me, here, on this Iowa farm.”

“ _ Why _ !?” 

“Because I am not leaving here without you. Honoria told me upon picking me up from the airport that I was a horrible boyfriend. I happen to agree. So, we scratch the relationship at which I failed and we start over - you the blushing bride, me the doting husband, Hibiki the ring-bearing cat,”

“The population of Ottumwa with pitchforks…” 

“Darling, the population of Ottumwa is mostly geese, who are as likely to partner male to male as we, and people who already know I am in love with you because the O’Reilly’s are on a party line.”

“You love me, huh?”

“I am  _ in Iowa _ . How could that  _ fail _ to clue you in?” 

“You know, a better boyfriend would have given me a real proposal.”

“I thought we agreed that I am a terrible boyfriend and should be permitted to assume another role.” 

“Alright, Charles.” There were still tears in his voice. “One more chance. But if you do marry me, there’s something you should keep in mind.” 

“Yes, Max?” 

“I want forever. You do this and the only way you get to leave me is in a box. Got it?” 

“Yes, beloved. And I will not leave you. Not ever again.” 

***

A week later, the O’Reilly’s backyard was the stage for the strangest wedding Ottumwa had ever hosted. The personnel of MASH 4077 reassembled in their best Sunday clothing - Charles having paid to transport them. 

The Colonel exclaimed over the O’Reilly plough horses, sharing farrier tricks with his former clerk. Margaret helped Edna keep everything running smoothly, using her best head nurse voice when needed. Sidney showed Erin the farm’s therapy creatures and she fell in love with a lop eared rabbit. BJ hung onto Hawk, who got a jumpstart on crying before there was even anything to cry about. Honoria helped her new family member into Edna’s wedding gown - which she had graciously lended and helped modify. (She had always wanted a daughter, too). Father Mulcahy performed the ceremony (legal though it was  _ not _ ) and the farm’s sunflowers showed off by blooming like mad; the wind scattered golden petals like confetti and everyone got them in their hair. 

Klinger’s dark eyes moved over this family he’d found on the other half of the world. Charles only let go of his hand to allow him to dance with someone else. Between the proud Major, his new sister, his kitten, and these beaming friends who had come from all corners of the country to bless him with their good wishes and smiles and embraces, Maxwell Q. E. W. Klinger knew he’d never feel hollow and alone again. 

End! 


End file.
